School differences: Insane photocopying procedures and a hatred of staples

Having been incredibly spoiled working in an office for the past 5 years, I find the parts of my job here that involve paper to be pretty frustrating, and well, humorous at the same time.

Here is what a teacher at my school has to go through when they want to give their students handouts of something they've prepared:

1.  Print original on paper that already has information printed on the second side.

2.  Find photocopy request sheet

3.  Fill out photocopy request sheet

4.  Leave photocopy request sheet and original document with one of two higher authorities in the school for a signature (permission to copy).

5.  Once you've gotten this signature (possibly the next day), you can take these two documents to the photocopier, or rather, to the man who works at the photocopier.

6.  Now you attempt to communicate with the man at the photocopier who speaks little English.  You try to explain to him what your English characters mean (double-sided, which pages need printing, what side of the paper is yours and what was someone else's printed document that was used to refill the printer).

7.  Leave the material with him.

8.  Hope for the best.  If it's exam time or review time, the waiting process could take a few more days.

9.  Check the out-going photocopy section daily (search through randomly stacked piles of copied material in search of what might be yours).

10.  Come out victorious with your material (sometimes it's missing pages, or you have to cross off pages that have nothing to do with the food chains handout you put together for your grade 6 science unit, but whatever).

Now, the fun begins:

The machine doesn't staple.

If you want your packages stapled, you have to do so manually.

This is fine.  Again, I've worked at an office for years, occasionally I'd forget to hit the staple button -no big deal, stapling 30 documents takes a little more than a minute maybe?

But for some reason, teachers aren't allowed to give students something that is stapled unless the staples are also covered from both sides with duct tape.  Yes, duct tape.  So you are asked to wrap every corner of everything that you give to students that is more than 1 page long with a piece of duct tape.  

I have spent hours duct-taping my corners and I still don't fully understand what the threat is.  

The best explanation I've gotten is something along the lines of "little fingers get hurt easily".

Remember my concern about the safety of children in my motorcycle post? 

Now can anyone tell me how they could possibly be so concerned about staples?